Trainers – Running More than One Horse in the Same Race
One dilemma that faces punters from time to time is when a trainer runs two or more runners in a race. Which one to you pick? Do you split your stake and back all their runners? Do you leave the race alone? Do you just pick the most fancied runner? This article will hopefully help to answer some of these questions and point you in the right direction.
For this article I am looking at UK flat racing (turf + all weather) going back to the start of 2016 to 30th September 2020. All profits have been calculated to £1 level stakes using Betfair SP less the standard commission of 5%.
Firstly, I looked for trainers that had run two or more runners in at least 40 races. This gave a sample of 81 trainers. From there I wanted to compare their record in those races compared to races where they saddled just one runner.
I looked at in particular at strike rates and the A/E index. Just to explain to new readers what the A/E index means – the A/E index is a type of impact value.
The A stands for ‘Actual’ and the E stands for ‘Expected’ – the stat shows a comparison of actual winners to expected winners. To give you a numerical explanation – imagine you had 10 horses that started Even money. Each horse would have a 50% chance of winning according to the price and hence in 10 runs you would expect 5 winners (50%). Imagine that 7 of the horses won – so that gives us:
A = 7 winners
E = 5 winners
A/E index = 1.4 (7 divided by 5)
Any score over 1.0 can be deemed a positive.
Ok, so let me look at the trainer strike rates first. Now comparing strike rates is not quite as easy as it sounds. You cannot really compare ‘like’ for ‘like’. The reason being that say a trainer is running three horses in the same race, if one of them wins then two of them would still have lost giving you a 33.3% strike rate overall. In races where the trainer ran one horse and it won, the strike rate would be 100%. The data backed up my theory with only 10 of the 81 trainers having a better overall strike rate in races where they ran at least two horses compared with races where they ran just one.
The trainers were:
Appleby, M
Carter, Lee
Ivory, DK
McEntee, PS
O'Shea, JGM
Brittain, A
Hammond, M
Leewellyn, BJ
Millman, BR
Usher, MDI
These trainers are definitely worthy of further individual inspection.
On to the A/E indices next – again I was looking for a higher A/E index in the races with two or more runners from the same stable as compared to races with sole runners.
Of the 81 trainers, 32 achieved a better A/E figure.
These trainers are listed below:
Appleby, M
Duffield, Mrs A
Ivory, DK
Moore, GL
Balding, AM
Easterby, TD
King, A
Morrison, H
Beckett, RM
Evans, PD
Llewellyn, BJ
O'Brien, AP
Botti, M
Fell, Roger
Loughnane, Daniel
O'Keeffe, Jedd
Brittain, A
Gosden, JHM
Loughnane, David
O'Shea, JGM
Burke, KR
Hammond, M
McEntee, PS
Pears, Ollie
Caeeoll, AW
Hills, Charles
Midgley, PT
Perrett, Mrs AJ
Carter, Lee
Hughes, R
Millman, BR
Usher, MDI
As perhaps one would expect all 10 trainers from the initial group (those with a higher SR%) appear in this one too.
For me the next port of call was time to look at all these trainers individually and drill down into their records to see if I could find any profitable angles.
For the Gold edition this month David has identified the trainers that land some huge priced wins with their second-string runners and he has the facts on Aiden O’Brien and how we can profit from this top trainer who will run up to 7 horses in the same race.
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